Variation on a Theme – Institute for Community and Family Resilience

Continuing on the theme of “if only we knew then, what we know now”…I realize that we have learned so much about trauma, what it is and its effect on the brain and body over the past 20plus years. I think I’d like to change the paradigm to if only we put in effect the “what we know now”, rather than what we knew then. What I’m trying to say is that I think we are continuing to behave as though we don’t have information, new science if you will to change how we are parenting, how we are teaching children, how we are interacting with one another in community, how we are practicing medicine. I’d like to focus on parenting for this blog entry. In particular, parenting children who come from the hard places of trauma. We need to understand, we need to be taught what exactly trauma is and what it has done to the mind, body and emotional spirit (I may have just made up that term) of children. We need to have that understanding, hopefully, before we begin to parent them as foster parents and/or adoptive parents. And as we are learning about the effects of trauma on the children, we need to tune in to the possible effects of trauma on ourselves. And yes, I do believe that this has got to be a part of foster care/adoption training from the very beginning. It doesn’t mean that if a person has experienced complex trauma and toxic stress they should not foster or adopt. It does mean, however, that just because someone has those experiences and now seems to be highly functioning, they may indeed be triggered in a stress situation and react rather than respond to a child. They may believe that since they function so well, it just takes pulling oneself up by their bootstraps or “pulling up their bit girl panties” to just move on. Sometimes training means re-learning and that re-learning includes re-learning about oneself. I just mentioned triggering, what I mean by that, for example, your child may be horribly disrespectful and you react as though it is your mother telling you that you aren’t worth anything; or a teacher telling you that you shouldn’t bother applying to college because you just aren’t college material. And so, instead of responding in the moment as though your child is not okay and that is why they have said terribly disrespectful things, you react as though it really is an attack on you and you go back to being the child who is being disrespected by an adult in authority (parent, teacher). So yes, we do need to learn about trauma, about how being removed from a biological parent/family effects a child, how each subsequent move/disruption effects a child and why then they behave and learn (or not be able to learn) the way they do. AND Additionally and along with learning about trauma, parents need to understand how the behavioral manifestations of trauma in a child you take into your family may affect you and other family members. Stay tuned for Variations on a Theme Part II: For parents to share with school folks

About Author

Elaine Spicer

I have been a social worker for 31 years. My work has been with families and children first in the area of Child Protective Services and then as a therapist working with the same population. I have worked with divorcing and divorced parents teaching co-parenting techniques, supervised therapists and have been a social worker for emotionally challenged children and adolescents in an inner city school system. About 7 years ago I was introduced to the work of Bryan Post and, as a friend and colleague said at the time…I went Post-al. All of my previous assumptions and indeed my work using behavioral interventions, got pushed aside. And along came the realization that none of the interventions, meant to change behaviors, had anything in common with helping children heal from the trauma they had experienced. My best work these days is as a coach/consultant for parents, other caregivers, and teachers. The services I provide are parent education, coaching, consulting and supervising. I am the mother of five adult children and grandmother to five. I am both a bio mom and an adoptive mom.

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